


The Black Place

by warriorpoet



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 03:52:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/pseuds/warriorpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane, her father, rehab, and relapse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Black Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



There was one time she'd been fifty days clean when Donald said to her, "You don't ever share at the meetings, Jane. Don't you think it would help?"

To be honest—which she was supposed to be doing, but hadn't really been, and didn't think she ever could—she'd been dreading this topic of conversation coming up. She didn't know how to phrase it without totally pissing him off, or at the very least insulting him and throwing it back in his face after he'd been surprisingly patient with her. For once.

"It's just... hard, Dad, to do it with you there. I don't have any privacy at all anymore – and I get it, okay, you need to rebuild your trust in me, I'm not going to have that fight with you again – and I just, you know... it's like my brain is the only private place I've got." Jane shrugged and lifted the mug of coffee to her lips. The coffee burned her tongue, and she winced.

"Being open and accountable is the only way you're going to stay in recovery."

Like he knew anything about it. His father had been an alcoholic, and he thought that gave him the ultimate authority on twelve-step programs, even though admitting he was wrong and not in control was something he'd _never_ do, and therefore would automatically suck at any kind of program. That never stopped him from pushing Jane into it, though, over and over again.

Jane sighed. "I know that, and I'm totally dedicated to making it stick this time, but... it's hard, Dad. I've been... I've been going to other meetings, on my own, while you're at work. You know, it keeps me busy, keeps me from being alone. I share then. A lot. All the time."

"Really?" Donald seemed pleasantly surprised.

"Yeah. Really."

Bullshit. Total bullshit.

"That's good, Jane. I'm... I'm glad. I hope you really are in it for the long haul this time."

"I am." She nodded, smiled, warmed her hands on the mug.

She relapsed twenty days later, and it was five days after she lost her time when Donald noticed the broken locks on her bedroom window, his emergency cash missing from where he kept it in his dresser drawer.

He dropped her at an inpatient program and visited every other Saturday, on his weekend off, always silent and sad.

\-----

Another time, he picked her up from rehab and told her she was on her own. She could stay with him until she found a place to live. He'd help with her rent until she found a steady job. But that was it. He was done.

"You need to hit rock bottom, Jane," he said, for about the millionth time. "I'm not going to sit by and wait to catch you just before you fall."

"I know," she answered quietly, going through the newspaper, circling the ads for one-bedroom apartments for rent.

When she told him she'd found a job as a bartender, Donald fixed her with that weary, exhausted look. Something else that had happened about a million times.

"Do you really think that's a good idea – "

"You said I'm on my own," she shot back.

"Please try to find something else."

"So, what, you actually want to keep paying my rent? There's not a lot out there I can do that pays anything decent."

"Well, Jane, maybe you should have thought of that earlier and finished college instead of shooting your scholarship money into your – "

She'd gotten up from his kitchen table and slammed the front door before he could finish the sentence. He didn't need to finish it. She knew how that one went. 

It was freezing cold and she'd left her coat behind. The walk back to her apartment took her down dark streets, past familiar corners, but she didn't stop. Didn't score. Fuck him. She was going to prove him wrong this time.

She stopped calling him. Stopped dropping by his house. Pawed through a rack of winter coats at the Salvation Army to save herself from having to go crawling back to him and collect the one she'd left behind. The one she bought was black with a fake leopard print fur collar. It had a hole in the left pocket. It was ugly as hell, but what it _represented_ was important.

She bought cheap posters of Monet's water lilies and lined the walls with them, until she felt forced into purity and tranquillity, something fresh and alive that wasn't the blinding white concrete and baked desert outside her window. She shopped for plants and covered the sills with pots of African violet and philodendron. After sixty-eight days clean, she couldn't resist rubbing it in and invited her father over for dinner. Donald complimented her decorating, the care she'd taken with the apartment, and how healthy she looked. He asked about her job, carefully avoiding any actual talk of the temptations associated with spending hours of her day serving alcohol to occasionally questionable types of people.

Jane was 144 days clean when flirting with a customer at the bar to up her tips for the night turned into him offering to share his coke with her. She'd tried it a few times before and had never really taken to it, so it couldn't do that much harm, right? Just this once? Just to keep her pepped up and chatty with the bar patrons when her feet ached and her head pounded from the loud music and the smell of booze and puke?

After nine solid days of _just this once_ , she made a new friend when she found out another girl at the bar, Amanda, had a stash of Oxys. It made coming down a little easier. Just took the edge off. Until it didn't, and she took Amanda with her to score some H.

By the night she woke up in Amanda's bath tub in her clothes, submerged in freezing cold water, a tray of ice cubes being shaken out on her head, she'd completely lost track of how much time was gone. Was it weeks? Months? A millennia? 

"What the _fuck_?" 

"I thought you were OD'ing," Amanda said, her eyes wide, her pupils shrunk. "I didn't want to call an ambulance in case you weren't... and in case they called the cops. I didn't know what to do, Jane, I'm sorry – "

Jane staggered to her father's house, still dripping wet. She banged on his door.

"Dad!"

There was no answer.

"Daddy, I need help! I'm sorry. I screwed up. Are you there?"

She felt dizzy and sick and like she couldn't hold herself up anymore. She sat down and then woke up on his couch with his weary face hovering over her. He was holding her hand and it looked like her arm belonged to someone else. She hadn't noticed how thin she'd gotten until that moment, when it looked like her father was holding her bones, where the track marks had somehow gone right down and scarred her to the marrow.

"What happened to you? Why are you doing this?" he asked.

"Daddy, I'm sorry. I—I'm okay, I just... I don't know, I think I have the flu really bad or something, I didn't know what else to do—"

"Jane, stop. Stop lying to me. Stop treating me like I'm an idiot." He rubbed his forehead and lowered his voice, while that tight, cutting edge remained. "I've called an ambulance. You're going to the hospital, and then you're going to rehab."

"Yeah," she slurred. "That... that's probably a good idea."

He didn't speak to her the entire time she was gone. When she came back, posters bowed at the corners, come unstuck in the stifling heat. Brittle leaves and rotted brown petals littered the floor of her apartment and crunched under her bare feet as she tried to air out the rooms.

\-----

At 246 days clean (this time, and the most time she'd ever made so far), Donald offered Jane the job of managing the duplex he'd bought as an investment property.

"Having someone on site would be a huge help to me. Some of the tenants I've had there really need to be kept in line. It's mostly UNM kids, and there's no real problem with them. Just that some of them can be a little rowdy. I've kept more than a few security deposits. I'm going to have to re-paint one of the apartments before I can rent it out again."

"Sure, Dad. It sounds good."

"I'll give you a good discount on the rent. It'll keep you busy. You can get some of your independence back while still being near enough to keep in touch. We can keep going to meetings together. I think it'll be good for you."

"Okay, I get it. You want me out of the house but still don't trust me enough to cut the cord completely. I said it's fine. I'll do it."

Donald bristled at that. "I'm trying to help you, Jane. That's all I've ever tried to do. Getting a little help with that once in a while would be nice."

She bit the inside of her cheeks and counted to fifty, chopping carrots with even strokes, scraping them into boiling water with a clatter.

"I'm sorry," she muttered. "I do appreciate it. It's a big responsibility, and I know it's probably taking a lot for you to trust me with it."

He was silent, washing lettuce, the water from the faucet drumming into the sink sounding angry enough to take his place. 

Jane rolled her eyes. There were times like this when she wished she knew how to keep her mouth shut, while simultaneously wishing she had a father who didn't make her feel like shit every time she said anything she really meant.

"I'm sorry, too," he finally said. "I was hoping you'd see this as my way of saying I'm proud of you for getting this far."

"You could've just said it."

Donald put his hand on her shoulder. "I'm proud of you."

"Thanks," she whispered, and burst into tears.

\-----

On her sober birthday, she got her 12 month chip with Donald watching from the same folding chair he sat in every week.

"I, um..." Jane exhaled and fiddled with her bracelets, the chip trapped in her clammy fist. "I've tried to do this a few times before, and this is the first time I've made it this far, so..."

The assembled crowd applauded and Jane looked up in surprise.

"Oh. Thanks. Um... I don't share a lot at these meetings, not as much as some of you do, because... because my Dad is here. My Dad is here with me every week. And, um... if it wasn't for him bringing me here all the time, I'm not sure I'd keep coming. Because one of my biggest motivations to not use anymore is that I don't want to disappoint him again. But... at the same time, that's one of the biggest reasons that I always want to use. Because I'm a disappointment to him. It's like I want to show him that I'm even worse than he thinks I am. Sometimes I want him to realize that he doesn't know me at all, he doesn't know what a shitty person I am because if it were up to me, I wouldn't ever stop. And... at the same time, I want to prove him wrong. I want him to know I'm so much better than he thinks I am, and I want to totally rub his face in it." 

Jane smiled down at the podium as there were a few chuckles from the crowd. She knew Donald wasn't laughing, though. She didn't want to know what he was doing. 

"So, I guess... I guess I just wanted to say that's why I don't share a lot, but I really appreciate hearing all your stories and... maybe I'll be braver now I've made it a year."

They clapped for her again as she took her seat quickly. It felt like her face was on fire, she kept her head down, wouldn't look at her father. She was so sure she was going to see some look of pure disgust with himself that he had spawned this wasteful junkie demon child, all black clouds and black heart. She was so sure that what she saw was going to make her run from the room, find a place to score, and just shoot up right there on the corner. Just piss away a year in a matter of minutes.

When he took her out for coffee after, all he said was, "Congratulations," and gave her a tight smile.

Jane nodded. "Yeah. I should probably get going soon, I want to keep working on my mural for the bedroom."

"How's it coming along?"

"Good. I'm almost done. I'm really happy with it."

"You're keeping drop cloths down? If there's any paint on that floor, you're paying to clean it up. Don't think I'm not going to take a retroactive security deposit from you."

"Yes, Dad. I know how to be a responsible paint user." She rolled her eyes to show she was kidding.

"I know," he said. 

She still had the chip in her hand, clutching it so hard that when she got home she thought she could see a mirror imprint of those words on her palm.

_Keep Coming Back._

\-----

370 days clean, and she sat on the end of her bed looking up at the mural she'd finished the day before.

She'd spent most of the night looking at it.

She hadn't yet found a way to translate everything she missed about using onto the page or the canvas, but what was on the wall in front of her was as close as she'd come. A dark-haired girl, safely cradled in the infinite euphoria of a swirling galaxy, floating and flying all at once. It looked right, to her.

Maybe it was dangerous, to have that there, above her head while she slept, being the last thing she saw at night and the first thing she saw in the morning. But the temptation was there no matter what she surrounded herself with. Having the mural was an acknowledgement of that, a reminder that temptation could pass, she could be in control of letting it pass.

Or something like that, anyway. 

"It's very nice," Donald said the next time he stopped by to take her to a meeting. "It'll be a shame to paint over it should you ever move out to a bigger place."

"Couldn't you just cut the wall down, let me take it with me?"

"Funny."

"I'm not going anywhere, Dad. And besides, even if I do, I can always paint another one."

"It's very nice work," he said again. "Is it a self portrait? She looks a little like you."

Jane shrugged. "Yeah, kind of. Maybe. I dreamed about falling through space a lot when I was a kid. Remember those glow-in-the-dark star stickers I had all over the wall?"

Donald smiled fondly. "I remember."

"I think they were to blame. So... maybe it's like a dream self-portrait. I didn't really think about it." Bullshit. Total bullshit. "I just wanted something with good colors. No offense, but the beige situation you you've got here is kind of boring."

"It may be boring, but it's practical. Neutral. Less likely to turn prospective tenants off."

"Like I said, boring." She laughed, and picked her purse up from the floor. "You ready to get going?"

They sat in their usual folding chairs, but on that week, Jane stayed in her seat and didn't get up to share.

\-----

The last time she relapsed, she lost 554 days. Her 18 month chip was shiny and new and left forgotten on the bedside table in her room next door as she smoked a bowl of blue sky with Jesse Pinkman.

Just this once, right? The poor guy was hurting. His friend had just been murdered. He was sweet. He really liked her. She'd already managed to almost fuck things up with him once. Besides, meth wasn't really her thing, either.

There were so many more days lost in between, before Donald called her from outside the duplex and caught her coming out of Jesse's door.

That time, there was shouting and screaming and Jesse waving a bat around and Donald on the phone with the police, and Jane said, "I'll go to rehab. I'll go first thing tomorrow." She begged, "Daddy. Please... tomorrow," in a small voice with tears in her eyes, like she was sixteen and he smelled weed on her jacket, like she was seventeen and stole leftover post-surgery painkillers when she spent school vacation with her mother, like she was nineteen and he had caught her nodding out, shoved up her sleeve and saw the track marks for the first time. 

And Donald relented, maybe because he was tired of this, tired of her, and didn't give a shit what happened to her anymore. Because he'd given up on her for good. Because he just wanted to get out of that place and leave his lousy fuckup daughter and her smackhead boyfriend behind.

Maybe because she was such a good liar and for some reason he still wanted to believe in her.

Jane didn't know why he let her off that last time. She didn't care. 

She and Jesse had half a million dollars and could do whatever the fuck they wanted. If Donald didn't care about her anymore, fine. She could go. She had Jesse. She'd get clean again, and _stay_ clean this time, for herself. For her new life. She was getting away from it. She was going to be someone new. It would work out this time.

"This is the last time," Jane said quietly as she worked the lighter under the spoon. She loved the ritual of it, the exactness of the procedure, the anticipation. She always missed that whenever she stopped. She tried to replace it with other things, like finding enjoyment in ripping open new packets of tattoo needles, setting the inks out, lining up the stencil just so. But it was never the same.

"Yeah." Jesse licked his lips. "Do you... can you do it? I like it best when you do it."

She looped her belt around his bicep.

"Will they let me see you? In rehab?"

"I don't see why not," she mumbled around the syringe between her teeth.

"What if your Dad, like, gives them instructions or something? Is he allowed to do that?"

Jane brought his vein out, standing up clearly against his pale skin. She passed the end of the belt over to him and took the syringe. "We've got four hundred and eighty thousand reasons for nobody to listen to him. And when we're clean, we're gonna be gone and we're never coming back. We don't have to worry about him. Or anything. Ever again." She smiled, and he kissed her quickly.

"We're gonna be okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. We're gonna be okay."

His head had already hit the pillow, eyes heavy lidded, when she dropped the syringe on the bedside table and thought _that was the last time_ , like she had so many times before. The rush hit her and she curled up on her side behind Jesse, winding an arm around his waist.

"We'll be okay," he slurred.

"We'll start over tomorrow," she sighed. "We'll get clean."

Bullshit. Total bullshit.

Jane closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his bare shoulder, drifting, floating, not feeling Jesse's body anymore, not feeling her own.

Maybe it wasn't gonna be tomorrow, but someday she'd get it right. Then her Dad would see what she could do.


End file.
